Yesteryear: A GMA Book Club Pick: A Novel
4.3 | 814 ratings
Price: 14.99
Last update: 04-28-2026
Product details
- ASIN : B0FH1V3D9M
- Publisher : Knopf
- Accessibility :
- Publication date : April 7, 2026
- Language : English
- File size : 2.6 MB
- Screen Reader : Supported
- Enhanced typesetting : Enabled
- X-Ray : Not Enabled
- Word Wise : Enabled
- Print length : 391 pages
- ISBN-13 : 978-0593804223
- Page Flip : Enabled
- Best Sellers Rank:#35 in Kindle Store (See Top 100 in Kindle Store)
- Psychological Fiction (Books)
- Psychological Fiction (Kindle Store)
- Psychological Thrillers (Kindle Store)
- Customer Reviews:4.14.1 out of 5 stars(24)
Top reviews from the United States
- Aliya????????♥️Thank you Netgalley & Knopf for an eARC♥️♥️♥️
Natalie Heller Mills is insufferable in the most entertaining way. She calls her followers "my sweet traditions" while hiding industrial fridges behind reclaimed wood. She sneers at "The Angry Women" (her caps) like she's personally offended that anyone with a liberal arts degree would dare critique her raw-milk empire. And yet—I couldn't look away. The author does this sneaky thing where you're laughing at Natalie, but then you realize you've also been performing your own life for an audience, just with fewer mason jars.
Then she wakes up in 1805. Or does she?
The middle third of this book is brutal. Not in a grimdark-for-no-reason way, but in a "your fingers crack and bleed hauling water and no one cares about your brand voice" way. There's a scene where she tries to explain social media algorithms to an 1805 farmer's wife, and the woman just stares at her like she's possessed. That moment broke something in me—the absolute loneliness of knowing things no one else can verify.
The injury in the woods (no spoilers, but you'll know it when you get there) made me put the book down and walk around my apartment. It's not even the most graphic thing I've read, but the aftermath—how Natalie's carefully curated self fractures—is what got me.
My one quibble: the ending. I won't say if she gets home or not, but I'll say I wanted one more beat of ambiguity before the resolution. It wraps up a little too neatly for a book that spent 300 pages telling me nothing is neat.
Still. I haven't stopped thinking about the line: "My name was Natalie Heller Mills, and I was perfect at being alive." Past tense. The whole book is right there in that verb.
Read this if you like: dark satire that actually has teeth, survival horror that doesn't romanticize the past, and watching a woman realize she was a prisoner in both centuries, just different wallpaper.
Not for you if: you need likable protagonists or clear answers about what's real. The book refuses to hold your hand, and honestly? Good. - EthanA Smart, Twisty Take on Social Media and IdentityFrom the outside looking in, Natalie has the perfect life. She lives on the picturesque Yesteryear Ranch, tucked into the quiet hills of Idaho. Her husband, Caleb—a ruggedly handsome cowboy—runs the agricultural side of the farm, while Natalie raises their six seemingly perfect children. She shares their simple, rustic, all-natural lifestyle with over eight million followers, who watch with envy.
But if social media has taught us anything, it’s that nothing is ever quite as it seems.
In reality, Natalie relies on a team of nannies to wrangle the kids while she maintains her carefully curated image. Her live-in producer, Shannon, ensures everything runs smoothly behind the scenes. And Caleb? He’s never successfully grown a plant or kept an animal alive. Natalie secretly employs real farmers to keep the ranch functioning under the cover of night. Oh, and Caleb is also having an affair with Shannon.
This picture-perfect life is nothing but a façade, and it’s about to collapse.
After discovering the affair and Shannon’s sudden resignation, Natalie retreats to her bedroom, overwhelmed. When she awakes the next day, something is…off. She’s still in the same house, but Caleb is older—years older—and strangely competent. The children are there, but they aren’t her children. And all the modern conveniences that sustained her life are gone. No nannies. No producer. No electricity. No running water.
Has Natalie somehow slipped into the very past she’s been pretending to live in? Or is something far more unsettling at play? Whatever this is, if she wants to salvage her life—and the empire built on it—she’ll have to find a way out.
With Yesteryear, Caro Claire Burke bursts onto the literary fiction scene with a debut that may be one of the most original novels I read all year. There’s a sharp, biting irony in forcing a character to confront the harsh realities of the lifestyle she’s built a brand on promoting, but the exploration of hypocrisy is only the beginning of what Burke has in mind.
Burke alternates between Natalie’s present-day predicament and glimpses into her past, gradually constructing the version of her we meet at the novel’s start. It’s a smart, effective structure that deepens our understanding of an admittedly complex and often frustrating protagonist. As Natalie struggles to make sense of her situation, the novel expands into a thoughtful meditation on motherhood, womanhood, religion, politics, and the performative nature of life in the age of social media.
I found myself completely absorbed, eager to uncover the truth behind what was happening. The answer is as bold as you might expect from a novel this daring, though I suspect the ending will prove divisive for some readers. Even so, I was captivated from beginning to end. Yesteryear is a striking debut novel that will almost certainly make my list of favorite reads of the year. - MelThis is a wild ride!3.5 stars. This book from debut author, Caro Claire Burke, was a wild and crazy ride! It is told from the point of view of Natalie who I found to be bitter and insufferable. She is a confused woman who is raised by a mother who is quite religious. She never fails to let us know how she feels about people, so being in her head is quite something. I didn’t always like being in her head though I typically love reading stories told from the first person perspective. However, I really wanted to know what was going on in this strange and unique story so I kept on going through her very negative commentary. It goes through two time periods… the present, where Natalie is pretending to be the perfect wife with the perfect family, living the dream as a tradwife (I honestly hate that word!) living on a farm “growing” their own food, etc. showing her life off to the world on social media. Then we see that Natalie has suddenly found herself in the early 1800’s and are brought into this timeline where the same negative thoughts exist in a similar place but different time.
I’m honestly torn on his many stars to give this. The fact that Natalie was so annoying made it difficult to read. On the other hand, the ending really cleared so much of the confusion going on and left me feeling ultimately more satisfied with the book.
Thank you to NetGalley and Penguin Random House for an ARC of this book. All opinions in this review are my own.